WMLB 1690: The Voice of the Arts

I’ve been away from the ATL for a long time now and I’m totally removed from the happenings in the city. I browse The Loaf and Stomp and Stammer every now and again to see what’s up, but I remain uninformed of most things that I’d find interesting.

However, I was browsing the Web this week and, to my delight, I came across the WMLB 1690 radio station. I was immediately interested by the fact that it offers non-mainstream music with poetry, spoken word and historical pieces interlaced with the tunes, interviews with local artists, and, most interesting of all, the fact that it uses amplitude modulation to broadcast everything. Not your run-of-the-mill operation.

It’s been said many times over how pathetic modern radio is. I don’t need to reiterate all that. Anybody using major radio stations as their source for discovering music has serious issues in digging. My dial always remained shifted to left with WABE 90.1, WCLK 91.9, WRAS 88.5, WREK 91.1, and WRFG 89.3 being my favorites. However, this new venture is in a whole different league. That league is called D.I.Y.

Overshadowed by the FM radio waves and drowned out by CDs on stereos and MP3s on iPods; WMLB 1690 seems to just be doing their own thing and waiting for everyone else to figure out that their mission is the right one.

Life needs to be eclectic and WMLB 1690 serves up offering upon offering to make it just that way. One check of their current playlist shows they’ve spun tunes by The Ramones, Professor Longhair, Thelonious Monk, Manu Chao, The Coasters, The Kinks, Bill Monroe, Mahalia Jackson, and Blind Willie McTell among others; all in the last hour. Search the playlists even more and the diversity continues to remain.

Tired of being your own DJ? Need someone else to inject a batch of different sounds into your eardrums? Want to support a homegrown operation? Then tune into WMLB 1690 or stream it online. I’d be shocked if you were disappointed.